Ross Mirkarimi moves to bar Herrera from official misconduct case

Suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has petitioned the court to bar City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s legal team from working on the official misconduct case against him.

Ross Mirkarimi

Herrera is representing Mayor Ed Lee who wants to remove Mirkarimi from office. The mayor suspended Mirkarimi from the sheriff’s post last month after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment in a domestic violence-related case involving his wife, Eliana Lopez, on New Year’s Eve.

Mirkarimi has sued in San Francisco Superior Court to have the suspension overturned and also has vowed to fight for his job through the administrative official misconduct process that is scheduled to start with a City Hall hearing on April 23 before the city’s independent Ethics Commission. The Board of Supervisors then would decide whether Mirkarimi should be permanently removed from office or reinstated to the office he was elected to in November.

Dennis Herrera

Mirkarimi’s attorney, David Waggoner, asserts that the City Attorney’s Office has a conflict, and should not be allowed to represent the mayor, who brought the charges, and the Ethics Commission and the Board of Supervisors, which will consider the charges. The city attorney drew up the charges.

“We’re concerned about the city attorney’s role in any of these proceedings at this point,” Waggoner said Wednesday. “The City Attorney’s Office cannot provide legal representation to the mayor, then act as the prosecutor, then also advise the Ethics Commission and the Board of Supervisors. They (Herrera and his legal team) have from the onset demonstrated whose side they’re on. There’s an actual conflict of interest.”

Not so, said Herrera spokesman Matt Dorsey. The city attorney will oppose the motion to disqualify.

“This is just a procedural dispute about an administrative process,” Dorsey said. “The City Attorney’s Office has lawyers assigned to every commission in city government. We have ethical screens in place for about two dozen quasi-judicial functions citywide. They assure independence and protect due-process rights. It’s no different for the Ethics Commission, and we’re confident the court will agree.”

The court will consider Mirkarimi’s request to remove the city attorney from the case next Thursday. The hearing on the larger question of whether the suspension should be overturned is scheduled for the following day.